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What, exactly, is the ump's authority to throw the music guy out, or have the music turned off? This is not only a ridiculous overreaction but overreaching. What if the music guy just ignored the ump? Could the ump order a forfeit? I can't imagine that would be proper.

What, exactly, is the ump's authority to throw the music guy out, or have the music turned off? This is not only a ridiculous overreaction but overreaching. What if the music guy just ignored the ump? Could the ump order a forfeit? I can't imagine that would be proper.

Stuff like this has happened before -- I know I've read similar stories in at least three different umpire autobios...

It looks like Ken Kaiser, Jocko Conlan, Durwood "You're Out, And You're Ugly Too!" Merrill, and of course Ron Luciano have autobiographies, Luciano being the one who was smart enough to grab the title "The Umpire Strikes Back". Then there's this book about a season with Hunter Wendelstedt, and Ron Luciano's other 25 books. Is that all?

What, exactly, is the ump's authority to throw the music guy out, or have the music turned off? This is not only a ridiculous overreaction but overreaching. What if the music guy just ignored the ump? Could the ump order a forfeit? I can't imagine that would be proper.

This is covered under baseball's rule 9.01; essentially, under subparagraph (b), the umpire(s) have the authority to order any club employee to refrain from doing anything that they deem to be detrimental to the orderly playing of the game. Also, under subparagraph (c) the umps have the broad authority to rule on anything not specifically covered in the rules. So, to answer your question, they could indeed order a forfeit if the music guy did not cease and desist.

In one of Luciano's books, he tells the story of a minor-league ump throwing the organist/PA guy out after a controversial call against the home team. He had played "When Will I Be Loved" over the PA system, specifically, the lyrics "I've been cheated/Been mistreated..."

It looks like Ken Kaiser, Jocko Conlan, Durwood "You're Out, And You're Ugly Too!" Merrill, and of course Ron Luciano have autobiographies, Luciano being the one who was smart enough to grab the title "The Umpire Strikes Back". Then there's this book about a season with Hunter Wendelstedt, and Ron Luciano's other 25 books. Is that all?

Gerlach has elicited entertaining stories from these figures under fire--about their lonely travels, their dealings with umpire baiters, battles for unionization, breaking through the color line, and much more. From Beans Reardon, who came up to the National League in 1926, to Ed Sudol, who retired in 1977, here is a witty and telling portrait of baseball from the boisterous Golden Age to the Jet Age of Instant Replay.

And

The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand: The Game as Umpires See It by Lee Gutkind

To provide this unique—if controversial—look at major league baseball as umpires see it, Lee Gutkind spent the 1974 season traveling with the umpiring crew of Doug Harvey (crew chief), Nick Colosi, Harry Wendelstedt, and Art Williams, the first black umpire in the National League. The result is an honest, realistic, insightful study of the private and professional world of major league umpires: their prejudices and petty biases, their unbending pride in their performance, their inside perspectives on the game, and their bitter criticism of the abuse often directed at their profession and at their conduct. As relevant today as it was in 1974, this illustrated chronicle shows how little has changed in the lives and duties of umpires in the last quarter century.

Guided by his passionate love for the game as he wrote The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand!, Gutkind attempted to present the umpires in a positive but realistic light: "I portrayed them as real people, honorable, hard-working and dedicated, but with warts and flaws like the rest of us. But they didn't want to be compared with real people; they wanted to be umpires—on a plateau above most everyone else." Since the publication of this book in 1975, neither Harvey nor Wendelstedt have communicated with Gutkind, with Wendelstedt even denying that Gutkind traveled with the crew.

If you search Google Books for "three blind mice" and baseball umpire, it comes back with:
* a number of citations about Ebbets Field and the Dodgers' "Sym-phony,"
* an organist ejected from a 1985 Clearwater Phillies game,
* an organist ejected from an unspecified 1993 minor league game,
* a quote from a minor league umpire about his umpiring partner Bruce Froemming ejecting people from the press box for playing the tune,
* Bill Veeck playing it at a minor league game in the 1940s,
* the Peoria Chiefs' organist playing it a the behest of the team owner in 1984
* a mention of it being played by at least one "clever organist" in every league in As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires by Bruce Weber
* Ron Luciano's book Strike Two

Steve McMichael, the former Chicago Bears player turned pro wrestler, was ejected for talking #### to Angel Hernandez during the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley back in 2001.

I was all over Angel one night from the stands. Not profane...but loud and persistent. He was having a bad night.....(not news), and I was having a good one....he he....(Sam Adams, or Blue Moon or something)

Anyway...about the 5th inning, this woman sitting with two teenage girls across the aisle leans over to my buddy sitting on the aisle and asks if my friend can ask me to cool it. It turns out those were his daughters...and I was "ruining the game" for them.

the ump in that daytona game ordered the organ and the PA turned off, so there was no more of that for the rest of the game. does that mean none of that irritating music blaring during breaks? i could go for that.